Selling in Europe: Borders Fade

By STEVEN PROKESCH, Special to The New York Times

Published: May 31, 1990

LONDON, May 30—
The single market of 325 million consumers that the 12 nations of the European Community are trying to create is at least two and a half years away, but consumer-products companies are acting as if it were already here.

Scores of companies are creating ''Eurobrands,'' giving products a single brand name throughout most or all of Europe. Many are supporting their products with ''Euro-ads'' - advertisements that except for the language, are similar in message and often identical or nearly identical in execution.

For instance, in Britain and France, Mars Inc., the United States candy maker, has already changed the name of its Treets candies to M & M's, the name it uses in the United States.

Over the next five years, Nestle S.A., the giant Swiss foods company, plans to replace several national brands it uses to sell Camembert cheese in Europe with the Nestle brand name.

And the Colgate-Palmolive Company, the big United States consumer products maker, has reduced the number of Palmolive soaps it sells in Europe to only three fragrances, down from at least 10 just a short time ago, said James G.B. Williams, director of planning and research at Young & Rubicam Europe, the London-based European arm of the American ad agency.

''The assumption now at many companies is that everything will be the same unless someone can prove why not,'' he said.

Worried that presenting different advertisements in different countries might confuse consumers, Philips and Whirlpool Major Domestic Appliances, the European joint venture between Philips N.V., the Dutch company, and America's Whirlpool Corporation, has come up with a single ad concept, executed with minor variations for each country, to establish recognition of its brand throughout the Continent.

Until recently, marketers tended to focus on the things that distinguished Europeans from one another. One big exception has been the American companies that have tried to sell products like Levi's jeans, Coca-Cola and Marlboro cigarettes as a part of American culture. And companies have long sold products to the rich and the young, groups that often have traits in common with their peers around the world.

But the changes sweeping Europe are transforming the way products are marketed, forcing many companies to think Pan-European. While no one believes that the 1992 market unification will instantly homogenize Europeans, most agree that it will make it easier to compete throughout the Continent by eliminating trade barriers and harmonizing national regulations regarding both advertising and product standards.

Deregulation of Broadcasting

Companies are also trying to take advantage of the deregulation of the broadcast industry, which is expected to increase the amount of air time available for advertising.

And they are also trying to capitalize on the convergence in consumer tastes that has resulted from the growing middle class. Europe has enjoyed robust economic growth in recent years - prosperity that is expected to continue because of the single market. Smaller families with two wage earners, single-family housing and the means to travel have become hallmarks of the middle class throughout Europe just as they are in America.

''The specter of 1992 is causing multinational companies to think about whether they are doing the right things,'' said Neil Kennedy, executive vice president of Backer Spielvogel Bates Europe, the European arm of the ad agency owned by the Saatchi & Saatchi Company.

While a unified Europe means opportunities, it also means competition. To cope, companies are frantically creating and buying Pan-European brands or those that have the potential to be, helping to fuel the acquisition boom in Europe. Nestle, for example, has bought Buitoni, the Italian pasta concern, and Rowntree, the English confectioner.

Companies are also trying to strengthen the brands they have by winnowing their portfolios, making it easier and more cost-effective to manufacture, distribute and advertise their products in Europe.

A handful of daring companies are even abandoning strong national brands in a bid to create Pan-European or global brands. In addition to establishing M & M's as a brand in Europe, Mars is now changing the name of its popular Marathon candy bar in Britain to Snickers, even though some marketing experts warn that the move is risky, given the closeness of the name to nickers, the British term for women's underwear.

Even companies that do not tamper with established national or regional brands are more closely coordinating the way those items are advertised and packaged. Henkel K.G.A.A., the West Germany chemicals concern, uses the same packaging and the same television ad for a detergent that sells under several different names on the Continent.

Market researchers have discovered that there are more similarities in living styles and values among Europeans than they had previously recognized - similarities that seem to grow with incomes and education levels.

Jane L. Hourigan, director of the two-year-old Single Market Unit at D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, advises her Pan-European clients to look for regions in Europe with social or economic similarities. She said marketers of luxury products might therefore want to focus on ''the golden circle,'' the 250 miles around Cologne, West Germany, that takes in almost all of the wealthiest areas of the Continent.